Phenology by Katharyn Howd Machan

It’s time for the spotted salamanders.
They’ll make their way to pools, to ponds,
past fairy cups spilling scarlet blood
of spores into slow melting snow
past equinox, towards longer light.
Wood frogs, peepers singing the night
call for response from our own breath,
awakening what too many machines
work to still in long memory
of why and how we love this earth
in danger now—no, dying.
Dandelions, forsythia, daffodils trying
to break gray with their gold.
Can sky be warm as air blows cold?
Turkey vultures sweep to clean
what’s failed, what’s lost, what’s died.
So far we have escaped their hunger
as they return, wild full wings wide.



Katharyn Howd Machan has been writing and publishing poetry for half a century. She lives and teaches in Ithaca, New York with her beloved spouse and fellow poet Eric Machan Howd. She directed the Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops, Inc., and served as Tompkins County’s first poet laureate. She belly dances.